A UT-Austin professor is Texas A&M University, claiming that the university’s new faculty fellowship program discriminates against Asian and White men, the Texas Tribune reports.
Accountability, Climate, Equity and Scholarship Faculty Fellows program, or ACES, is aimed at increasing diversity. According to the Texas Tribune, it focuses on “mid-career and senior tenure-track hires from underrepresented minority groups, that contribute to moving the structural composition of our faculty towards parity with that of the State of Texas.”
Richard Lowery, a finance professor at UT-Austin who is white, believes the new program prevents him from getting a job at Texas A&M. He claims it discriminates against White men and Asian men, favoring other minorities and Asian women.
Lowery filed his suit against the university in a Houston federal court on Saturday, Reuters reports. He claims the university’s program violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits education programs that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of sex and race.
According to the Texas Tribune, America First Legal, will represent Lowery. The group was created by Stephen Miller, a policy advisor for former President Donald Trump, and Jonathan Mitchell, the man who helped write Texas’ six-week abortion ban.
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“These discriminatory, illegal, and anti-meritocratic practices have been egged on by woke ideologues who populate the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at public and private universities throughout the United States,” Lowery’s lawyers wrote, according to Reuters.
There do not appear to be any Asian men involved in the lawsuit, but the suit says Lowery is suing on behalf of “a class of all white and Asian men who stand ‘able and ready’ to apply for faculty appointments at Texas A&M.”
Laylan Copelin, vice chancellor of marketing and communications for the Texas A&M system, told Reuters it was “unusual” for Lowery to make this claim when he had not even applied for a job with the university.
“Our lawyers will review the lawsuit, confer with Texas A&M and take appropriate action as warranted,” Copelin said.
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